


if the courses be departed from

by bokutoma



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - A Christmas Carol Fusion, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - It's a Wonderful Life Fusion, Alternate Universe - The Monster of Elendhaven Fusion, Christmas, Inspired by A Christmas Carol, M/M, Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:54:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28083507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bokutoma/pseuds/bokutoma
Summary: "Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead," said Scrooge. "But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!"Sylvain has a lot to learn this Christmas; fortunately, a visitor from the sea is eager to show him
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier, side Claude von Riegan/Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Dedue Molinaro
Comments: 8
Kudos: 16
Collections: Sylvix Advent Calendar





	if the courses be departed from

**Author's Note:**

> this was supposed to be like 5k MAX. i'm sorry mom
> 
> this is a part of the [sylvix advent calendar.](https://twitter.com/sylvixcalendar?lang=en) check out a bunch of other great fics and art from the beginning of december through christmas!

The story begins, as it so often does in Elendhaven, with a stone, a wish, and (this time, at least) a metaphorical death.

It is not a fairy tale; it is neither lovely nor gruesome enough for that. This far north, the only tales they tell are cautionary, ending with a half-hearted kiss on the forehead and a lackluster reassurance that everything would be all right.

For once, this is not the case.

Elendhaven sulks at the edge of the sea, her air thick with sweet rot and choking perfumes, her seas churning far below the surface. If you know how to ask a question, it might be answered.

Sometimes, Hallandrette will whisper you a secret you had not known you’d asked for.

But the story begins with a stone, a wish, and a metaphorical death.

How it ends is something else entirely.

* * *

_ December 13 _

Men like Sylvain are above companionship.

Of course, he says  _ men like him,  _ but the old families of Elendhaven are a dying breed. There  _ are  _ no men like him.

Regardless, he does not need the fellowship offered by the men of the Mittengelt families, the ones who claim Elendhaven heritage after only a century upon her shores. They only wish to talk about wine, women, and the expansion of their businesses, and while Sylvain indulges heartily in the first two, he hates their smoke-smeared infection of the city, and their companionship is odious at best. He can fake it with the best of them, for there is nothing else to do but succumb to the same decay that cradles Elendhaven like an ill child, but Sylvain José Gautier is richer than the Mittengelt goddess and twice as lovely. He has no need of anyone else.

He will be alone on Christmas Day, no father to scowl and yell, no vapid southern men to preach their false knowledge.

He is one of the last true sons of Elendhaven, and he will relish in the hold he maintains on the city.

He will enjoy being alone.

The manor is quiet; after his father’s death, the only movements he’s ever heard are his own. He has servants, of course, but Luther Gautier had been nothing if not exacting in his standards, and he had been of the firm belief that the hired help should be neither seen nor heard until absolutely necessary. Whether Sylvain had agreed had never been a part of the equation; after his death, it had been easier to continue the way things were than try anything new.

So Sylvain is a model of picturesque misery and exquisite agony; this is hardly anything new, and he broods quite beautifully. If he takes his cognac to the study across from his rooms and throws himself upon the crushed velvet chaise in the manner of a Byronic hero (Villain? They’re all the same to him.), then that is exactly what is expected of him. If he falls asleep in fitful bursts, knocking his glass over and soaking the expensive rug imported from the south of the Mittengelt, then when he awakens, the only proof that it had ever happened at all will rest solely on the bitter scent of alcohol that clings to his haphazardly buttoned waistcoat.

He is terribly alone, isolated in a manner that has driven greater men to madness. Perhaps therein lies his genius, the advantage of his own willful mediocrity. He is well-bred for loneliness, and so he comes to embrace it like a dead man does the shore.

When the shoreline calls, he answers. It is not for nothing that he was born as if from the swells of Elendhaven’s seas, and though the city has become excellent at pretending at civility, at wearing masks of flesh and bone, Sylvain does not answer the call of the southern goddess. Instead, he raises his arms in half-crazed supplication to Hallandrette, Mother of the Seas. The salty air is far too cold for him to be barefoot, clad in only a shirt, a waistcoat, and a thoroughly wrinkled pair of trousers, but he is alive, he is alive, he is alive. He is the only one that matters in this moment, and he is alive.

The sea washes a hallanroe up to his rapidly numbing feet, and he pockets it with a grin so wide that it could split his face in half. What a present that would be, a creature of the depths made just for him.

But his extremities are as red as his hair now, and some southern son or another is hosting a bash. It would not do for him not to attend, even if he will seethe and rage the entire time, a portrait-pure smile pasted on his face.

After all, that’s the best part.

* * *

_ December 20 _

Black sand scrapes underneath Sylvain’s fingernails as he falls to his knees at the smoke and salt edges of Elendhaven’s oily shores. The spray of the ocean is cold and fetid on his skin, his wretched sobs lost beneath the Black Moon’s crashing waves. Tears and snot carve burning trails against his frozen skin, and he is so terribly, awfully alone.

_ Come home,  _ Hallandrette whispers from her whale-bone throne at the seat of the sea.  _ Or else give me something worth saving you for. _

For all that he pretends at enjoying his tower of isolation, that which defines him as the second son of Gautier, and for all that he smiles and sneers and swears that he is better than the bastard sons of a country that did not want them, he has nothing,  _ is  _ nothing. With shaking fingers that can hardly remember their function, he reaches into the lining of his coat and fishes out a diamond ring, heavy enough to feel like a ball and chain in his hand.

_ Come home,  _ Hallandrette calls.  _ Or else give me everything. _

With a wounded sound wrenched from the very depths of his core, Sylvain flings his mother’s wedding ring into the sea, and it is lost from his vision before it even hits the water. Desperate, wailing, wrung out and pulled apart in this horrid winter wind, he takes the hallanroe he could not leave behind from his pocket and casts it against the immutable stone of the Nord shore.

It does not so much as crack.

And maybe, after all that, this should be what breaks him. Hallandrette still screams beneath the sea, singing and squalling and begging for her last true son to sink below and make a home in her ribs. But there is no hope for a wretch like him, no mercy from a mother or a Mother, so this final failure comes as no surprise at all. Sylvain picks up the roe as an afterthought, tucks it into his pocket just as he has done every day for the past week, and begins the tottering march home on shaking legs.

He has a party to attend.

There is dancing and drinking and all manner of debauchery here, and still, Sylvain perches in the shadows like an artfully ragged gull, swooping in where crumbs are left for him but otherwise content to keep to himself. Perhaps he will hear something of this later, for where the center of the conversation is, there is where he usually is eager to bask. Not tonight, though, not with the roe heavy in one pocket and another frightfully empty.

“Damnation, my good man, your hands are like ice!” Ansley cries when he meets Sylvain for his seventh drink of the night. They slide through like nothing, like the choking rain that comes down in foul sheets, and Sylvain hates Ansley because they are the same.

“All the better to chill my glass,” he replies, but there is no joy in it, no sense of pride in the banter.

Ansley is already moving away, and if Sylvain hates him because they are the same, then there is no merit in his Elendhaven heritage. Perhaps that is why another mother has left him. He is nothing and no one.

But time moves quickly when you want none of it, and it is late enough for him to be stumbling home, battered by the wind he once knew how to own, one that parted for Elendhaven’s last true son. Fraudulence is as his frock now, and his eyes tear up from the gale that threatens to wring every last drop from him.

In the guttering streetlight, a source that cannot hope to contend with the brewing storm, Sylvain catches sea-black eyes flashing from a face like the narrow moon, strokes of midnight framing them like salt-encrusted silk. Unbidden, a cry of want rattles through him, but when he blinks away his own defense against the outpour of the weather, they are gone.

Now he is hallucinating. Surely his father looks down proudly on his crumbling trainwreck of a son.

* * *

_ December 21 _

It is long past evening when Sylvain rises from his fitful slumber, sheets twisted like clinging lovers to his pale and sweating skin. Between the heavy curtains and the even heavier downpour, it is impossible to tell this from sight alone, but he keeps a statement timepiece across from his bed, a grandfather clock with its tongue removed, never chiming but always faithful.

His nightshirt is soaked through with the remnants of his nightmares, and even the chill feels like relief when he untangles it and tosses it to the side.

It does not hit the floor, because the floor does not make disgruntled sounds when clothes land upon it.

In a flash, Sylvain is up, forearm against the intruder’s throat in a manner that speaks of muscle memory, and it is only when the scent of sweet rot and salt invades every sense that he realizes what - who - he has before him.

His stranger stands before him, a cut against his jaw from where Sylvain’s signet ring had scraped him. There is no surprise in his face; in fact, there is nothing save a quiet sort of disdain, one that makes Sylvain’s head spin and stomach curdle with too many conflicting emotions.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, heart in his throat and pounding hard. Would that he were still dreaming. “How did you even get inside?”

The stranger’s face is rife with Elendhaven’s sallow beauty, sharp and unforgiving, and those hell-black eyes give away nothing. “Which question are you looking to have answered?”

His voice is nothing like Sylvain might have expected, all too human and heavy with scorn. It’s familiar enough, certainly, but to have it directed from a mouth that cannot belong to anything but a monster is a novel experience.

He is still leaning on this stranger with enough force to have made a person collapse, but as it is, he only seems to be mildly dizzy.  _ Monster. Hallankind. Mine?  _ “How did you get inside?” he repeats.

The stranger snorts inelegantly. “I walked. Your security is shitty. Nobody saw me at all.”

“Why?”

“Because I intend to save your pathetic ass from yourself, whether you like it or not.”

And even with all the facts laid out before him, it is this statement that sends him reeling, stumbling backward until he hits the edge of his bed and goes down with a force. “Hallankind.”

“Obviously.” The stranger rubs at the cut on his jaw, and where his fingers should have come away bloody, Sylvain only sees the pink shine of new skin. “Are you always this stupid?”

“Only when fairy tales invade my personal privacy.”

The stranger shrugs, but makes no further comment on that. “Any other asinine questions?”

Distantly, Sylvain recognizes the feeling thrumming against his ribs as panic, but he pushes it down as a wild smile comes to his face. “Oh, plenty. What’s your name? What the hell are you saving me from? Why did it take you a damn week to arrive? I’d all but given up on you.”

The stranger clicks his tongue derisively, and a hot tide of emotion washes over Sylvain in a numbingly thorough wave. “Felix. Yourself. Maybe don’t be so damn impatient next time you beg the Mother for a little playmate. You’re typically supposed to provide the body yourself, you know. It takes work to find someone with the right temperament when I wasn’t even supposed to hatch for you.”

“Sorry that I didn’t have any unused bodies lying around.” His voice is soaring higher and higher in pitch, and a distant part of Sylvain’s brain wonders at the last time he had sounded like this.

But that’s a silly question. This is the closest to himself he’s sounded in a long time, high and reedy and full of doubt. The last time he had sounded like this had been the last time he had really talked to anyone at all.

What a funny creature, this hallankind, to be made for him and yet be so willing to strip away every protective layer of his soul.

Felix shrugs. “I’m not the one who complained about the delay.”

“No, because you  _ certainly  _ don’t like complaining, do you?”

The words come out fast, unbidden, and Sylvain wonders how many mistakes are usually granted to the recipients of a new hallankind before that sea-tested strength is put to use.

Instead, Felix laughs, the sound blacker than the rain and thicker than the smog. It is unpleasant, discordant even as the only audible sound in the room, yet somehow the sound is comforting.

“Do you think you need help, Sylvain of Elendhaven?” Felix rasps, the sound of sand in his lungs and scales scraping against stone.

“Obviously. I went searching for you, after all.”

Felix does not take the bait, though his jaw clenches briefly, and it is comforting to know that he is human enough to be irritated with him, at least. It is comfortable ground. “And will you take my help?”

Suddenly, Sylvain is acutely aware of his state of undress, of his sweat-soaked skin and unruly hair.  _ Vulnerable,  _ he thinks, but the voice is not only his but his father’s as well, and he shudders. 

“Not until morning,” he says, hoping to sound firm but instead ending up at just loud.

“Poor thing. You must be exhausted after a full day of also being asleep.”

But Sylvain has climbed back into bed, back facing Felix, skin cold but for where that guttering-coal gaze pins between his shoulder blades. He does not have to look to know that Felix’s teeth are bared in a smile, and he does not have to look to know that it is at his expense.

_ Coward _ , that gaze seems to say, but Felix does not actually put voice to that thought. Small mercies, he supposes.

“Who were you in life?” he asks, the question heavy on his tongue.

Felix snorts, and Sylvain wonders at the messy humanity of the sound coming from something that so clearly isn’t, wonders if Felix intends to sit on the cold stone flooring of his room even when there’s a plush rug right in front of him.

Sylvain wonders what kind of a fairy tale this is, if it will end happily or if he will end up as filaments between Hallandrette’s teeth. He wonders if the two are even mutually exclusive. He wonders if they aren’t the same thing, in the end.

“Who were you when you were alive?” he repeats/

“Does it matter?” Felix asks, and his tone is not so much bitter as knowing. “You wanted me in death.”

There is no good answer to that, so Sylvain closes his eyes and prays for sleep untainted by hellion eyes.

* * *

_ December 22 _

He does not get it.

He sleeps through the rise and the crest of the sun both, and when he awakens, there is a steaming bowl of broth and a fifth of his father’s least favorite whiskey for him; Felix watches him from the corner like a sallow shadow.

“Do you eat?” he asks, or tries to ask. Regardless, Felix understands him, and he points to the crumbs by his bowl, gestures with the heel of the bread he’s already devoured.

“I’m not dead anymore,” he remarks, the tone something like a growl, if a growl could be patronizing.

“Hm. Who would have known? Your complexion is awful.”

But Sylvain is not in the mood to engage, not anymore, and he sends Felix a look that he hopes conveys dignified disdain rather than the anxious energy that froths in his stomach like sour and shaken wine. Heedless of the bareness of his skin, he pretends that Felix is any other guest (he  _ does not _ want him there) and dresses like he means to leave his hallankind as nothing but a forgotten memory.

With his temper, Sylvain expects Felix to challenge this - might even want him to - but he is silent as the grave as Sylvain laces up his trousers, eyes flat when he slips on a wine-red jacket. He stalks out the door, ready for a night of whatever constitutes revelry in the mind of the only person that resembles a friend, and Felix does not so much as breathe a word against the notion.

He wonders if Felix is really here to help, if a thing so dead would even know how.

In a way, though, Sylvain has been dead a while, too.

Dimitri’s party is dull by the standards of Sylvain’s lush lifestyle, but that matters very little when it is the closest approximation of fun he has had since his father died. He preens, he drinks, he makes eyes at whoever sways the least, but the ten minutes of conversation that Dimitri manages to squeeze in are the best of the night.

_ You are pathetic,  _ he thinks, and though he knows this entire night had been an exercise in avoidance, he goes home anyway.

The rain comes down in icy, fetid sheets, and Sylvain cannot help but long for the days of his childhood, fractured though it might have been, when he could stick out his tongue to catch a falling drop and not shudder at the taste.

The wind takes the door and slams it against age-old stone when he returns, and it is Felix who waits for him, eyes black and so painfully unreadable.

“What?” he says, or tries to say, but the room is swaying, and it’s not because of drink. Felix smiles, and it is a horrible, pitiless thing, but he crosses the distance between them as every light winks out in Sylvain’s vision, and he can just feel the brush of a hand before everything goes black.

* * *

_ There is Miklan, looking just as Sylvain remembers, big and broad, a giant in the flesh. The light of the sun throws his features into stark relief, makes them look further shadowed and stark. _

This is wrong,  _ Sylvain thinks.  _ Shouldn’t the sun make him look brighter?

_ But this is Miklan, his one and only brother, and his face twists into that same cruel grin that turns flinching into a reflex. Sylvain watches as he calls something indistinct to a waitress, and it is only then that he notices Miklan’s surroundings. This is no common tavern garden, and his seating no common chair; this is a place reserved for men of money and means, and Miklan sits at the center of them all, coin purse heavy and gold tooth gleaming in the Mittengelt sun. _

“What is this?”  _ he asks. Despite the feverish quality of his thoughts, he knows his hallankind can hear him. He must. Miklan’s fist comes down hard on the solid oak of the table he sits at, and the heavy ring he wears on his forefinger dents the wood.  _ “I thought you said you wanted to help.”

_ But Felix does not answer. Miklan melts away like candle wax on a late night, and there is nothing but an abyssal blackness for a horrifying moment before the world reconstructs itself.  _

_ He is here in Elendhaven -  _ home -  _ but he is not himself, not corporeal or even visible, and panic chokes at his lungs like the foul rot of smog before a figure snags his gaze. They are quiet, no wasted movement or drunken song adding character to their rain-sodden form, but it is in this way that he knows them. What had their name been? Did it matter? _

“It matters,”  _ calls Felix’s voice, but when Sylvain turns a body he’s not certain he truly has, he is nowhere to be seen. _

_ But he remembers now. Ivana. She had been something like the fourth person he had brought home after Miklan had left, and she had been charming enough, he supposes. A month is not a long time to keep someone around, but it had been an eternity to him, and he had wanted her close because she seemed to care about him. _

_ He had not cared about her. He had not cared about anyone at all. _

_ Now she is just as she had been the day that he met her, all solemn surety and the hint of light. He had stomped on that by the end, though that made it sound more purposeful than it had been. He hadn’t been made for soft things, for gentle warmth and care, then or ever. _

_ He thinks of Felix then, though he’s not sure why. Perhaps Hallandrette had been right in sending him a man so unabashedly unreserved in making his point. _

_ He catches the hint of his name on the wind, thinks he almost remembers her voice. He listens closer, because he is nothing if not wholly interested in the opinions of others when it comes to himself. _

_ “The Gautier heir?” she asks, and laughs. “Ah, but he was a fool and an unrepentantly selfish ass. I grieved the feelings I thought I had for him for all of a day before I counted my blessings and thanked the goddess above for deliverance.” _

_ Heat washes over him in furious strokes at that. To invoke the name of a Mittengelt god, to ignore the shore that feeds them in favor of a deity that has done nothing save change the fabric of their sea-salted bones… What does it matter that she desecrates his name? She is right about him, and he has always known it, but to abandon the one creature who has never abandoned him is more than he can stand to hear. _

_ “Ah, I knew it,” her companion says, a stuffed-up peacock of a man in Mittengelt-bright colors. “For all that he claims to be a true man of Elendhaven, it is no wonder he is about as pleasant as the sea.” _

_ He kisses her, this southern charmer, plants roses among the soft lines of her mouth, and Sylvain has seen enough of this charade, this mockery of everything he holds dear. To be happy… He wonders where he has gone wrong, that they can be so wrong about  _ everything  _ and yet be so right in this. _

_ He has had enough, but Felix does not let him leave until Ivana and her lover part, breathless smiles on both of their faces and love so blinding in their hearts that emotion better left unexamined swells in his chest. _

“Stop it,”  _ he commands, but Felix holds the vision for a moment more before it too twists away into nothingness. _

_ This time, the depth of the darkness grows, holds, leaves Sylvain to swim in an emptiness that does not even exist, and he wonders if it is reluctance that holds him here, and if so, whose. _

_ The empty void blinks into a shuddery vision of the house as it had stood in his childhood, cold and imposing.  _

_ The door opens.  _

_ A boot emerges.  _

_ Sylvain  _ wails.

* * *

Sylvain awakens on the cold floor of his room, back aching, one leg tossed onto the rug like an afterthought. How he got there is a mystery easily solved when Felix is perched in the corner, sulking like a forgotten ghost.

“Did you drag me up here?” he asks, mouth dry. Felix scoffs, but does not otherwise answer, so he tries again. “Seriously, how does nobody here notice you hauling me around like a sack of fish?”

“Your stench carries less.”

It’s almost a compliment, and it settles the pounding of his heart into a steadier pace. He must be a masochist, but he finds he does not wholly mind it when it comes from someone who is made for him. 

Then he remembers to be angry.

“What the  _ fuck  _ was that?” When he shoots upright, his head pounds and he only barely manages to catch himself on an elbow before he sprawls back onto the floor, but his gaze does not waver from the pitiless black of Felix’s until the hallankind himself breaks it.

“Help.”

It is a non-answer given to a man practiced at them, and Sylvain wobbles to his hands and knees to catch Felix’s gaze again. “And what is it that you think you’re helping me with?”

Felix laughs, bleak and harsher than the wind at Elendhaven’s shore. “What you  _ wanted  _ me to help you with.”

“And my brother? My  _ father? _ ”

“Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it doesn’t help.”

“You are infuriating.”

Felix’s grin could cut through steel. “I am as you needed me to be.”

“You said you wanted to save me. From myself. Does it matter? I am miserable and then I will die. This is the way of the world.”

“And that’s it, you think?” Felix’s eyes are on him now, impossibly large and flashing with anger. “That you take what you’re given until your final breath, and everything  _ ends _ ? Surely you aren’t so stupid, not when I am in front of you, lungs rigged into motion by fish guts and kelp? There are worse things than death, Sylvain.”

There are tears in his eyes, Sylvain knows, and they ache to run free, but he will not let them. “And would that not be what I deserve?”

Felix’s fist comes flying at him, and Sylvain braces for impact; instead, it knots into the collar of his shirt and tugs him forward until they are nose to nose. Felix smells like the sea, but Sylvain is surprised to note that he also smells like the pine logs of his fireplace, like the smoky depths of the cognac in his father’s study. 

“No,” Felix says, voice hard. “It would not be.”

For a moment, it is only silence that hangs between them; silence and breath. Then Felix releases him, and Sylvain tumbles back onto his haunches, air seized from his lungs.

“But it is your decision. I will not make you be anything other than what you want.”

He is a fool beyond measure; there is no proof of Felix’s words, no hint that this will be anything other than torture. “Then make me into someone better.”

When the darkness steals the room from him bit by it, it leaves Felix’s eyes for last.

* * *

_ Sylvain is not himself, but that is okay, because for once, he is happier than he can ever remember being. He is six years old and has already earned the ire of his brother, but here, nestled snugly in his mother’s lap on Christmas Eve, he is safe. She wears her favorite perfume, the one that no one notices but the two of them, and she smells like the candles she lights in her room when it’s just the two of them, like apples and the drinks she sips at parties. _

_ “Merry Christmas, Sylvie,” she whispers into his hair as Miklan tears down the stairs. “I love you so much.” _

_ “Love you too,” he says back, but his eyes are on the present she has picked up for him, because he is a fool who does not know how good he has it. “What’s this?” _

_ “Unwrap it and see.” Her hands are gentle over his as she helps him with the ribbon, and when he tears through the paper wrapping like a wildling, she only laughs as pieces get stuck in her hair. _

_ It is a toy horse, polished gleaming smooth and black as the bottom of the sea. It is everything to him, and when it breaks three weeks later in what Miklan will swear is an accident, it will be the worst experience of his young life to date. _

_ But those three weeks had been the best he’d ever had, and as he is now, Sylvain is grateful for them. _

_ “Thank you, Mommy!” he hears his six-year-old mouth say. _

_ “You’re welcome, my love,” she replies, and all is right and warm. _

* * *

When Sylvain wakes, his face is already wet with tears, and he curls in on himself as he shakes and shakes and shakes.

Felix is polite enough to leave the room, but for the first time since he met him, Sylvain wishes he would have stayed.

* * *

_ December 23 _

This time, it is drinks with Dimitri and Dimitri only that keep Sylvain out so late. He does not know what caused the darling son of the Elendhaven elite to call on him, but he is grateful for it, for the company that is not once-dead twice-alive and the conversation that is polite but interested, as though Sylvain could say anything and Dimitri would find it genuinely fascinating.

It is terrifying, of course, but he is grateful for it all the same.

Still, as he walks back home, he finds himself eager for what Felix has in store for him. Perhaps this is unhealthy; he has always been a glutton for punishment. Beyond that, though he does not understand how this will help him, dredging up long-dead and limp shadows, he trusts that his hallankind knows him, that he will help. It is likely a foolish mistake from someone who trusts too easily, but the Mother would not lie to him.

Felix does not wait for him in the entryway this time, and Sylvain shrugs off his coat and scarf like he’s shedding skin. In just a half-soaked white shirt and trousers, he feels more than a little vulnerable, but there is a safety in that as well, in unfurling new wings and trusting Felix to catch him when he falls.

He is a fool beyond measure, but he’s beginning to make peace with that now.

When he enters his bedroom, Felix is perched on the edge of his bed, though the messiness of the sheets tells Sylvain that he had been lying down just moments before. Something odd stirs in his chest at that, something like possessiveness but far gentler, and a smile overtakes his face before he can even begin to wonder why.

“What are you so happy about? Finally manage to have a good time at one of your insipid little parties?” Felix is coarse, and a day ago Sylvain might have called him cruel, but he cannot bring himself to think ill of a man whose face is creased with the lines of his pillow.

“Just eager to see you, sweet. Can I not be excited that my soul is to be saved?”

The disgruntled look that steals the sleep-worn sweetness of Felix’s features says  _ no,  _ but he gestures Sylvain over nonetheless, lets him stretch out beside him before he tangles a hand through Sylvain’s hair.

“This is much nicer than last time,” Sylvain mutters, but when Felix takes his gaze once more, he does not smile.

In a way, Sylvain is grateful. He’s not made anyone smile in quite some time.

* * *

_ The sun beats eternal in Mittengelt, scorching hot and soothing only to those who already know the taste of Hell, but it is here that Sylvain spies a familiar head of blonde hair, shining gold and near-painfully bright, _

_ Ingrid. _

_ It’s been five years since he last saw her; she had been packing her bags after her father’s funeral, and he had begged her to stay, not seeing what could be out there for her that hadn’t been right there in their home by the sea. They had been best friends, he had thought, and he could not imagine a life without her in it. _

“There is nothing for me here but marriage,”  _ she had said, looking up at him with eyes both mournful and pitying, and it had been that which had allowed him to let her go. He had been sick of being pitied. Now, it would be better than nothing. _

_ She is happy, he thinks. She has never smiled unless she meant it, not since he had pointed out how pained she looked when she had tried to fake it. This one, however, is full and warm as she crosses swords with a man only fresh out of boyhood, pressing him back with a skill he had not known she was capable of. _

_ The man stumbles, and she presses her advantage with the competitive ruthlessness Sylvain remembers so fondly from their youth. The tip of her sword hangs at his throat, and he throws up his hands in laughing defeat. _

_ “You win as always, Ingrid,” the man says, and he is posh and arrogant in the way that the Mittengelt transplants in Elendhaven are. Still, there is genuine appreciation in his voice, and Sylvain cannot help but like him, cannot help but be glad there is someone in this world that knows Ingrid and her capabilities and loves her for them. _

_ “Maybe if you tried harder, you might win.” But Ingrid is laughing too, and a woman approaches them both with fondness in her gaze. “Dorothea, you really didn’t tell me how bad he is at this.” _

_ This Dorothea plants a kiss on Ingrid’s cheek, and if his childhood friend were not already red from exertion, Sylvain would swear that she would be like a flame. _

_ The scene twists, and it is Elendhaven as he did not see it on his way home, lights strung across slipshod rooftops and the faint strains of a Christmas carol echoing off the haphazard stone walls of a factory that has not yet wrapped up for the night. It is an Elendhaven he has not seen in years, one full of light and hope even as bulbs crack, trees groan, and wreaths pull apart in the wind. _

_ It is his mother’s Elendhaven, and he has never wanted to be a part of it more. _

* * *

The moon is ripe with nary a cloud in sight when Sylvain awakens, and though he isn’t crying this time, there is no more joy in his heart than there had been the night before.

“Some would say you’re a cruel man,” he whispers into the scant space between his face and Felix’s leg. Somehow he’s managed to nestle into Felix’s lap, and while every touch-starved inch of his skin relishes in it, he wonders why something as prickly as his hallankind would allow it. “Showing me these visions of happiness that I cannot have.”

“And why not?” Those hell-black eyes land sharp and cold on his face, but Felix does not seem to be arguing just for the sake of it, though Sylvain wouldn’t put it past him. “You are alive, are you not?”

“There is no one I value whose life I have elected to be a part of. I have ruined myself before I knew that better things were available to me. I am a fool and a coward, and though I’ve always known this, it does not help to have it thrust so plainly before me.

It is plain to me that you think this is what I need, what I need saving to achieve, and I agree with you. My only regret is that I must inform you that this is a life that is not for me. I have ensured this all too well.”

Felix sighs, and in any other moment, the sound would be all too pretty coming from his lips. He shifts Sylvain out of his lap none too gently, and Sylvain wonders if this is it, if this will be the moment that Felix realizes he is beyond even a dead man’s ken.

Instead, he lays down beside him, and Sylvain feels his breath hitch in his throat as Felix lays a cold hand on his cheek. He smiles then, and it is a small thing, close-lipped and unpracticed, but Sylvain has never seen anything lovelier.

“Don’t say that again. You got formal on me, and I am not one of your rich little friends. I will not be distracted by pretty words.”

“That’s a funny thing to say to someone you’re being so delicate with.”

_ “Sylvain.” _

It is a command as much as it is an utterance, and in it, Sylvain is lost. “Yes?”

“What is for you is yours to determine, and yours alone. If you want what you’ve seen for yourself, you have only to reach for it, and I will do whatever is in my power to get you there.”

Against his will - it  _ is  _ against his will - his eyes flutter shut, and he breathes a quiet laugh into the bare inches between them. “And why is that?”

“Because you are mine.”

It is a good thing that Sylvain’s sight blurs and grows dim at that, because he does not want to think about what his response might have been otherwise.

* * *

_ This time, it is Dimitri that Felix shows him, looking much as he had just a few short hours ago. He is more disheveled now; according to the bottle on his desk, he had not stopped drinking when Sylvain left, only switched to sipping instead. _

_ He makes an interesting picture: regal, elegant, and everything that Sylvain isn’t. Still, when the door opens and his valet slips through, Sylvain sees him as he is, exhausted and concerned. _

_ “I worry about him, you know,” Dimitri says, and the look his valet - Dedue, Sylvain remembers - gives him is just short of tender. A sharp pang of jealousy runs through Sylvain at that, and he wonders what it might be like to have someone care that openly about him.  _

_ “Herr Gautier?” Dedue asks, but the point is moot. The both of them know who Dimitri speaks of, and when a third figure struts through the door, it is clear he knows as well. _

_ “Are we talking about my favorite guest of yours?” Khalid von Riegan is an effusive man, the only man of Mittengelt Sylvain has ever met and liked. There is dishonesty about him, but it is never the personal kind, and Sylvain finds it hard to trust someone who has never felt the need to cloak themself with falsehood anyway. “He was a delight tonight, wasn’t he?” _

_ Dimitri’s look is sharp with reproach. “Khalid. He was ten steps away from… from…” _

_ “From something terribly self-destructive? Yes, I quite agree. Yet he was so much  _ lighter  _ than usual. Perhaps he has found himself some nice boy or girl who has not let him run away yet. It would be good for him, I think.” _

_ And it is a good thing that they cannot see him here; as unsettling as it is to be talked about, it is doubly so when the things they say are true. _

_ “Love is not the answer to life’s problems that you think it is.” The exasperation in Dimitri’s voice is real, but there is fondness there as well. One look at Dedue, quiet as always, proves that he too is getting some measure of enjoyment out of their banter.  _

_ Sylvain wants what the three of them have so badly he can scarcely breathe. _

_ “Ah, but look at us! I would say that it is at least a charming diversion.” _

_ Dimitri does not dignify that with a response, but the scarlet flush of his cheeks says enough. “Dedue, I will appeal to you. You are far more reasonable than Khalid. Do you think it would be terribly presumptuous of me to invite myself over to Sylvain’s manor for a Christmas dinner?” _

No,  _ Sylvain all but begs.  _ Say no.

_ “I hardly imagine he will be offended by you thinking of him,” Dedue says, and Sylvain could all but cheer. “If he is busy, he will say no, but he seems reasonable enough. I can’t see why he wouldn’t want you there.” _

_ “You’re biased,” Khalid teases, and Sylvain watches with no small awe as the reticent valet turns a rather impressive shade of scarlet for a man who never reddens under Elendhaven’s sun. _

_ “And you would not be?” _

_ “Of course I am. Our Mitya is so very handsome, after all.” _

_ Abruptly, Sylvain feels as though he’s intruding as Khalid slings an arm around Dimitri’s shoulders, but before he can feel like any more of a voyeur, the world spins out, almost as though Felix had been listening to him the whole time. _

* * *

_ December 24 _

For the first time in what might be months, Sylvain rises before the sun begins to fall. For the first time in what might be years, there is someone beside him when he does so.

“Good morning,” he says, and the breath at his back stills.

“How did you know?” Felix asks, and Sylvain cannot help the pleased shiver that runs down his spine.

“A lucky guess.” There is satisfaction in the curve of his back as he stretches, he knows; it’s unavoidable when he feels so content. “Or I’m hyper-aware of every move you make. You decide.”

Felix is quiet at that, even as Sylvain rises and begins to dress, steadfastly not looking back. He does not know what he’ll see, not when his hallankind has an answer for everything, and he cannot decide what reaction would be worse - or if he would like one far too much.

He dresses lightly today; he does not plan on going out. It’s a look reserved for melancholic stares out the window of his father’s study and brooding at the shoreline, heedless of the bite of the wind, and Felix notices all too well. 

“You can’t go outside in that. You’ll freeze your ass off.”

“Glad you’re concerned about my ass.” There is a wheeze behind him, as though Felix has had all the air punched out of his lungs, and Sylvain suppresses a smile despite the fact that his back is still turned. “But yes, I do plan on staying inside today. I certainly hope you haven’t made any plans.”

He turns just in time to catch Felix’s withering glare, and he wonders when irritation became something he looked forward to eliciting. “I’m dead. I don’t exactly have a social life.”

“My, the festive spirit really has overtaken you, hasn’t it?”

Felix opens his mouth to deliver what will surely be a crushing verbal blow, but Sylvain has plans for the day, and he intends to get to work. Heedless of Felix’s rumpled clothes, he slips his fingers through his hallankind’s and tugs him out of the room.

Felix grumbles, because of course he does, but he goes willingly enough even as they twist through the serpentine halls and all but rush down the marbled stairs. “Where are we even going? I didn’t know that you knew where anything outside of the bedroom, the study, and the bathroom even  _ was. _ ”

“You’re cruel to me, sweet.” Still, Sylvain does not hesitate even as he finds narrower steps, ones meant for servants instead of the wealthy elite. There is a faint memory of playing here when he was younger, of hiding in the pantry from things he would rather avoid and of sneaking pastries when the cook had pretended not to look.

That had been before his father had banished the sight of “the help”, before his mother had died.

He wonders why he kept up his father’s wishes, why he never told his servants, some of whom have been here longer than him, that they can walk in this space as though it is their own. Had he been so lost in his isolation that he’d been too afraid to take that step, or had he just been a coward?

He thinks he knows what Felix would say, and despite the harsh truth of that, he appreciates it all the same.

“Are you taking me to the  _ kitchen _ ?” Felix sounds marginally distressed, and Sylvain does not wholly blame him. He’s not entirely certain he knows how to cook, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t at least try.

“I’m expanding my horizons. Shouldn’t you be happy for me?”

“I’m going to die all over again.”

When Sylvain pushes open the door, it is to two servants who must have been hired after his father’s ban, because he does not recognize them at all. They freeze, and there is a strange emptiness in his chest as he watches their cut-off smiles and choked-down laughs. 

It reminds him all too much of himself.

“Don’t mind me,” he says, and for once, he is grateful for the smile he can pull out of his back pocket, because they both relax, if only marginally. “I’ve interrupted you, and I apologize. I just wanted to let you know that you can have the rest of the day off. Fully paid, of course.”

He feels Felix start through the tension in their connected hands, and his surprise is mirrored in the gazes of the other servants, who look as though they aren’t sure whether he’s playing a particularly cruel joke on him.

“Just us, sir?” one of them asks, confusion marring the lines of their narrow face.

“All of you. If you don’t mind passing along the message, I was going to try to get started on dinner.”

If anything, this only makes them more confused, and they fidget nervously in place. It should not be surprising, this lack of faith in him, so Sylvain makes his smile stand, does not let it waver with how guilty this evidence of his neglect makes him feel.

“I mean it, you know. You can expect as close to a clean kitchen as I can manage, so do tell Frau Freyja not to worry too much. Be with your families. I will see you both in the morning.”

They scurry off, likely worried that he will change his mind, but he is paying them no more mind when he turns to Felix. Felix, who looks at him with an indecipherable gaze, and Sylvain cannot help the turn of his mouth going wan.

“Surprise?”

“Was that supposed to impress me?” Sylvain had expected these words, but he’d thought they’d come out harsher, more irritable. Instead, they sound almost fond.

“It would be a pleasant side benefit, but no, I did not do this to impress you.” He winks. “If I have any luck, though, my cooking will do the trick.”

Felix sighs, but for once, Sylvain can understand the heart of someone else, and he knows that Felix is fond of him all the same.

The smile that tugs at the corners of that narrow mouth tells him so.

By the time he finishes dinner, he has stained the sleeves of his shirt beyond reasonable repair, and Felix has laughed so many times that Sylvain is lightheaded with want. He has not reached the end of whatever torture Hallandrette has planned for him in the form of his delightful companion, but as he bathes and redresses in his nightclothes, he finds it is all worth it for these moments.

“It’s a funny thing, isn’t it?” he says, apropos of nothing, as he watches Felix drown in one of his nightshirts. “You being made for me.”

And Felix has not been truly soft in the days since he has all but tumbled into Sylvain’s life, but he smiles so beautifully that Sylvain cannot help but press a kiss to his lips, one that Felix returns with a quiet, overwhelming ferocity. 

“It is,” his hallankind says. “What terrible luck I have, to be stuck with you.”

But as Sylvain sinks into darkness for the fifth time, Felix is red in the thin moonlight, and he may never have been happier.

* * *

_ This dream is of a different ilk, because when Sylvain blinks his invisible eyes open, there is nobody to be found. _

“Who am I supposed to be looking for?”  _ he asks into the howling winds of a seething Elendhaven storm, but his voice is lost among the crash of the waves against the cliffs below.  _

_ For the first time, Sylvain is afraid. _

_ The rain is heavier now than it has ever been in his memory, battering his body and pressing it down, down, down, until hands that aren’t claw at the wet earth until they hit stone. _

“Please,”  _ he whispers, but if Felix is listening, he does not answer.  _ “Please. I don’t want to see it.”

_ But the rain, the storm, the lightning do not care what he wants, and for the first time, Sylvain sees the inhuman face of Hallandrette in the swirl of the sea. If it is a warning, it is an effective one, and with a ragged cry, he looks down at what he has uncovered. _

_ It is a grave. It is  _ his  _ grave. _

_ The name carved upon it is unreadable from the elements and a lack of care, but he knows it for his own as surely as if he could feel the dirt and the mud bearing down on his chest. _

“Felix, I’m  _ trying _ !”  _ he begs.  _ “I’m trying! Please, please don’t let me be alone!”

_ And Felix is there, because Sylvain knows his presence like it is an extension of his own, but still, he says nothing at all. Still, he does not falter in his assessment of Sylvain’s worth. _

“Please,”  _ he cries, choking off on a sob.  _ “Surely there is someone who cares for me!”

_ The catch of Felix’s breath sounds behind him, as though he has tried to laugh but cannot find the strength to do it.  _ “No one in Elendhaven, Sylvain. No one in Elendhaven.”

* * *

This is the most violent awakening Sylvain has had since they began this whole endeavor: his teeth ache from the force with which he has ground them together, and each breath comes at the cost of the seizing in his lungs, as though they cannot decide whether operation is really the best choice in this moment.

“Felix,” he cries, and hates himself for it, for even here he still wants his hallankind so badly that it has become a physical craving. “Felix, you said that I am yours. You  _ kissed  _ me!”

“So I did.”

But Sylvain does not have it in him to parse the moods of a temperamental creature like him, and he struggles to sit upright so he can see those fathomless eyes, so he can know what Felix is thinking without having to wonder. “Are you really so emotionless? I have wanted to hear those words for as long as I can remember, and then you tell me there is no one who will care about me once I am gone. I am  _ trying,  _ Felix!”

“One holiday cannot change years of selfish isolation.” Felix’s hand skates across his, cold as ice and loath to linger; Sylvain cannot tell if this is a good sign. “But for what it’s worth, that ought to have been three times as long. I cut it off. The Mother sees and judges, and she will not notice a pinprick of change.”

“Then what is the point?”

“ _ I  _ noticed.” For the first time, Sylvain can detect feeling in Felix’s eyes, an intent so strong it knocks the wind that he has only just managed to collect from his lungs. “When you are gone, unless you wish something else of me, I will leave Elendhaven forever and return home. Without you, there will be nothing left for me here, and I will sink beneath the sea and nestle in the Mother’s spine, and we can be together as we were meant to, in the heart of the Black Sea.”

There is a declaration there somewhere, but Sylvain is still processing this change of tone. “What are you saying?”

“Only that there will be no one in  _ Elendhaven  _ who will care.” Felix bites his lip, and Sylvain’s heart clenches. “I should not say this. It risks undoing all of your progress, but I have never been one for doing as I’m told. You could be the most miserly, vainglorious bastard in the world - and I do not suggest it, because there are worse fates than what I’ve shown you - but I will always care for you. I may be your hallankind, but I meant what I said. You are mine.”

And Sylvain’s heart may not have yet had the chance to settle, but it kicks into a far more frantic pace at that. So slowly that he can scarcely believe he is even moving on his own, he crawls forward until he is tucked against Felix’s narrow frame, surprisingly strong despite everything. “And you are mine.”

Felix tips Sylvain’s chin up with the point of a finger, heedless of the faint blush overtaking both of their cheeks, and presses a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth, the first he has initiated. “That goes without saying.”

* * *

_ The wind is still brutal when Sylvain’s gaze lifts, but it does not batter him this time. He stands at the Elendhaven shoreline, the same one he had been at when he’d sobbed in supplication to Hallandrette almost two weeks ago. _

_ It is a miserable day, but that is a given here; what is different is that he knows that here, he is well and truly dead, in memory as well as in life. Strangely enough, he is at peace with that, safe in the knowledge that this is not a guarantee. _

_ There is Felix, waves lapping at his bare feet, unnaturally still but for the slight rise and fall of his chest. That ink-black hair, so soft beneath his hands, lies pasted to his shoulders, his neck, his face, every inch of it sheltering a place Sylvain wishes to leave his mark upon. He wonders if Felix still smells like his home, like his bedsheets and cognac and curling up by his fire, or if the absence of him has returned him to salt and smoke, Elendhaven to the bone. _

_ It doesn’t matter. Felix is his, and he is Felix’s, and neither life nor death will change that. _

_ The shore trembles, and for a moment, Sylvain wonders if this is where the city will be reclaimed by the sea. Instead, the water rises to Felix’s calves, and the cold shocks him into action. _

_ There is little light to see by, but that matters little when the vision is not meant to hide anything from him. There is a flash, a glitter, in the palm of Felix’s hand, and with his heart clenched tight in his chest, Sylvain watches his hallankind slide his mother’s wedding ring on his ring finger and stride into the sea. _

* * *

_ December 25 _

For once, exhaustion doesn’t tug at Sylvain’s limbs when he awakens. The air is as bracing as ever and the sun is hardly visible through the haze of smoke and fog, but he has slept well for the first time in years. In his heart of hearts, he knows that is due only to the man curled up at his side, eyes half-lidded and barely awake.

“Merry Christmas, sweetling,” he whispers, rolling over so that he half-blankets his hallankind.

“You’re smothering me,” Felix grumbles, but there is a smile at his narrow mouth all the same, one that Sylvain can’t help but press a quick kiss to. “But Merry Christmas to you too, I guess.”

There is much to do today, but there is time for this: a quick kiss that turns into ten more, a brief moment where they tangle together like vines, an unspoken prayer of gratitude mumbled in fits and bursts of breath. Sylvain is lucky to have this, he knows, and when Felix pulls away long enough for him to wiggle free and dress, he flashes a smile to the seas, because that is where his Mother dwells, and she has granted him succor.

“I hope you’re prepared for an excellent holiday meal, dear heart.” The grunt behind him sounds anything but persuaded, but Sylvain doesn’t mind. He has plenty of time to change his mind. “Dinner tasted well enough last night, didn’t it?”

“Why are you asking a dead man? It’s not like anything tastes bad after ages of not feeling anything.”

“Because you have no tact, and you love to tell me when I’ve done something wrong.” A day or two ago, this might have rung a little more true than he would have liked, but here, Sylvain is untouchable, and he throws Felix a wink to disguise the way his heart melts at the thought of his hallankind’s honesty. “I’ll take your silence as your rigorous support.”

“Only because you wouldn’t listen if I argued.”

His words are a lie, and they both know it. How strange, to be so happy at a lover’s dishonesty!

The servants take his dismissal with a great deal less surprise than the day before; were there not so large a gap between them, he suspects Frau Freyja, the cook, might have swept him up in a hug, just as she had done when he was a boy. 

Dinner is a more difficult story. Between trying to parse Felix’s tastes and measuring out enough for five, he has gone beyond the scope of his skill by quite a bit, and it is a fortunate thing that Felix must have some muscle memory left in him from life, or they would be quite without.

“Are you planning a damned feast?” Felix bites out after rescuing his braised meat from tipping into the fire the vegetables are cooking on. “You barely eat at all. We’ll never finish this.”

“Ah, but you forget that we’ll have guests.”

Felix starts in surprise, and Sylvain delights in watching the way his face crumples in annoyance when he realizes what Sylvain means. “Whoever thought you deserved any measure of clairvoyance was a fool.”

“Careful, sweetness. That’s blasphemy.”

They’ve just managed to plate the food in a manner approaching respectability when the heavy knocker of the door rings loud in the still air.

“I don’t know if I like him,” Felix murmurs as they traipse up the myriad stairs to reach the entryway. 

“Which one?”

“This… Dimitri. No one is that kind without an agenda.”

“Your jealousy is showing, Fe.” Sylvain laughs as Felix cuffs him, and it is this smile that the three men standing at the doorstep are greeted with. “Gentlemen! What a pleasant surprise.”

“Sylvain!” Clearly Dimitri had been expecting to be met with a servant. For a moment, bewilderment crosses that placid face, and Sylvain sees what Felix means. It’s so much more  _ fun  _ to be met with a reaction. “Have I caught you at a bad time?”

“It’s Christmas, my friend. How could any time be bad? Come in, all of you.”

Dedue is as unreadable as ever, but even he offers them both a small smile upon being let in, and Felix seems as drawn to his calm as he is to any of the visitors - which is to say not much. Khalid, however, looks as though he has sussed out a secret, and Sylvain cannot decide whether he is excited or terrified to learn what he has deduced.

(But Felix’s hand still rests on his back as Khalid’s grin grows with wicked glee by the second, so his discovery is not difficult to guess at. It seems as though they both have equal secrets to trade.)

“It’s only that you were the one to open the door, and not one of your staff. Is everyone feeling quite well?”

“Terribly impolite of you, Dimitri,” Khalid says, and for all that he is teeth and daring when he talks, he is warm when he teases them both. “Can’t you see that he’s given his staff the day off so he can spend his first Christmas with his new lover?”

Felix tenses, unhappy to be put on the spot, but Sylvain presses a kiss to his cheek and watches Dimitri redden. It would be fun to put him on the spot a little further, he thinks, but he will not be completely cruel. “As it turns out, I’ve over-prepared when it comes to tonight’s dinner, and I suspect you three did not come all this way just for season’s greetings. Stay for dinner. Felix and I would be delighted to host you.”

“An overstatement,” Felix mutters, but the words are just for the two of them, and it is an acquiescence if Sylvain has ever heard one.

“Allow me to help serve,” Dedue offers, as formal as ever, but to Sylvain’s surprise, it’s Felix who waves him off. 

“He’s the idiot that made too much food. Get comfortable or something. You’re guests.”

As it turns out, when he has help, Sylvain is a passable chef, and even Khalid, picky as he can be when he wants to, enjoys the meal that is the very culmination of what he and Felix can be together. It’s not long before they’ve polished off every ounce of dinner and retired to the sitting room, and Sylvain does not have to be a genius to see that there’s something Dimitri wishes to ask,

“How long have you been in Elendhaven, Felix?”

The sly twist of his smile is private, and Sylvain knows without waiting for the answer that what Felix says will be meant for the two of them alone. “All my life, and a little more besides.”

Dimitri is understandably confused by this, but at Sylvain’s genuine smile, he seems to believe he is better off not asking. “I see. And what do you do here? I’d thought myself acquainted with most everyone, at least by name. I see now that I’ve been too quick to congratulate myself.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you,” Sylvain responds instead, quick to save his friend - a novel thought - from what is sure to be a snide non-answer. “Felix is a very private man.”

Khalid is smiling like he thinks he has all the answers, while Dedue sits quiet like a man who knows he does; in the end, it matters very little to Sylvain where they think Felix has come from, who he is. A little confusion will not hurt them here.

Felix’s gaze tells him what he needs to know: if he wants, if he learns to trust, he can tell them someday. But that day is not today, and with only a minor exchange of gifts, the three are ready to depart for the night, shrugging on their coats like second skins.

“Merry Christmas, Dimitri.” The words are soft between them, Sylvain’s voice gentle and grateful. It is the most vulnerable he has allowed himself to be in eons; Dimitri’s countenance speaks of his relief. “Though I suspect with lovers like these, you’d be hard-pressed to have any other kind.”

Dimitri leaves stuttering and flustered, but even that simple joy pales in comparison to the intent look Felix gives him once the door shuts, hungry for soft touches and a warm gaze.

Sylvain can relate.

Bathing is a quiet affair, though it is far from solemn. Sylvain has never had much restraint when it comes to romance and its adjacent disciplines, but something about the dark flash of Felix’s gaze makes him want to wait, to do this right, whatever that means. That does not stop him from whispering a quiet confession into the sharp angle of Felix’s collarbone, nor does it deter Felix from returning the favor in the damp curls of his hair. By the time they are dry and clad in their sleep attire, Sylvain is flushed with a different longing than he has ever known before; curling up next to each other with the quiet roar of the fire as their backing song is the best kind of intimacy he has ever known.

“Merry Christmas, Felix,” Sylvain says, tracing the stark line of his hallankind’s cheekbone with a trembling hand. “I’ll be eternally grateful for what you’ve taught me.”

“Merry Christmas,” Felix whispers back, pressing something small and sharp into Sylvain’s free hand. “I hope you didn’t think you were done with presents.”

For all that he pretends otherwise, Sylvain is not a fool. He knows what it is he will see when he opens his hand, yet he cannot help but crave the suspense (cannot help but worry that it will be untrue).

But there, nestled in the palm of his hand, familiar as his own life line, is his mother’s wedding ring.

“Is this a proposal, Felix?” he asks, laughing through the choke of tears rising like a tidal wave in his throat. “You’re quite the romantic, aren’t you?”

“Don’t be an idiot. It’s way too soon for that.” The roses blooming on Felix’s cheeks cannot be solely attributed to the firelight; the sight of it causes Sylvain’s heart to beat faster in his chest.

“That’s not a no, you know.”

And though Felix’s glare could melt the sun, he doesn’t argue. Instead, he tucks himself against Sylvain’s side, sighs, and presses a heart-stoppingly soft kiss to his lips, one that sends Sylvain spinning out of orbit. “Go to sleep,” he mutters. “You have things to do in the morning.”

He doesn’t, not really, but if Felix thinks he does, then he doesn’t mind trying to better.

“Alright. Good night.”

* * *

This story ends, as it so rarely does in Elendhaven, with a ring, a kiss, and a metaphorical rebirth.

It is not a fairy tale; it is neither lovely nor gruesome enough for that. Sylvain doesn’t mind, though. What he has is more than he ever knew he wanted, and he is grateful. With a question asked and several answered, he drifts off to sleep, warm, content, and loved. 

Just outside his window, Elendhaven sings, her moody winds and heaving cries staved off by the twinkling lights that wrap around each building like an embrace. For a day, her people are happy. For a day, Hallandrette has helped them be so.

Tomorrow, she will go back to the tempestuous, frigid cradle of the Black Sea, uncaring of the vices that play out against her smoke-scarred skin. Tonight, though, she holds her children close.

If this is not a fairy tale, then for once, it is pretty damned close.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on twitter @kingblaiddyd!


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